


We Are Still Ourselves

by babykid528



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Happy Ending, Holidays, Light Angst, M/M, Major Canonical Character(s), Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Running Away, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty years after the incident on Isla Nublar, Lex and Tim are still learning how to cope. [Winter/Holiday Fic]</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Still Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [random_chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/gifts).



> Dear Yuletide Recipient - Happy Holidays!! I hope you're having a lovely Holiday season and year end. I was very excited to work on this fic for you this year. The Jurassic Park movies are favorites of mine and I loved having the chance to explore the future for Lex and Tim. I hope you enjoy what I came up with here. <3
> 
> Special thanks to my friends Jesstiel and Semper who provided hand-holding, read throughs, and beta notes. I couldn't have finished this/polished it up nice and shiny without them. *BIG HUGS TO THEM*
> 
> The title comes from John M. Norris' "[The Christmas Letter](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/129/5#!/20592592)."

* * *

 

_The Hammond Foundation, in conjunction with the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation and the World Wildlife Foundation, cordially invites you to attend the_

 

**10 th Annual Winter Fundraiser and Ball**

 

_Tuesday, the sixteenth of December_

_At the Mandarin Oriental_

_80 Columbus Circle at 60th Street_

_New York City_

 

_All proceeds to benefit the_ Save Tigers Now Campaign

_Formal attire_

_Cocktails 6:30 pm_

_Dinner 7:30 pm_

 

* * *

 

 

“The invitations were late this year,” Tim says as soon as Lex answers the phone.

She had just gotten home for the evening after a long day at the office and she had barely managed to kick her shoes off before the phone rang.

“Hi to you too, Tim,” Lex replies, voice dripping with weary sarcasm, “I’m doing well. Thanks for asking.”

He laughs in her ear and the sound makes her break out into a grin of her own.

“How’s it going, Lex?” he asks.

She sighs a little, but her smile remains intact when she answers, “It’s been pretty crazy at work.”

“Yeah.”

She can picture him nodding in agreement as she drops down onto her couch. Her cat, Ellie, saunters up and head butts her arm asking for pets. Lex pulls her into her lap and cards her fingers through her long fur.

“I keep telling you,” Tim says, “Sean and I have plenty of room in our apartment. You and David can take up residence in the guest room for as long as you need. You could work in the Gallery, David could help Sean manage the shop. Leave that whole mess behind.”

She sighs again, softer now, and sags into the cushions behind her.

“It’s not a mess,” she says.

“It is,” he replies.

“The Foundation isn’t a mess,” she says, firmer. _The family is._ That last part goes unspoken.

This is an old argument between them. An old argument that resurfaces often.

“Fine,” Tim acquiesces. “In the spirit of the holiday season, I won’t push any further. At any rate, the Foundation would definitely be a mess without you holding it together.”

“All the more reason for me to stay put then,” she says. “You’ll be there, right? At the benefit?”

She can hear him sigh before he answers, “Yeah, of course.”

Tim hates this. She knows he hates this. He took the first opportunity presented to him to get as far away as possible from New York, from InGen, from the Hammond family, and he’s been gone ever since. He went to California for college and up to Oregon after. He’s been living in Portland with his partner, Sean, for close to eight years now. Running an art gallery and artisanal soaps shop in the city, like a true hipster artist. Their dad pretends not to notice it, like Tim’s ‘lifesyle choices’ won’t be true if he doesn’t look at them too closely. Their mom just pretends Tim’s not the living proof that life once went so very wrong for her two children.

“Is Sean coming too this year?” she asks. He had to miss the year before because he had the flu.

“Yeah,” Tim tells her. “If I have to go, he has to go too.”

Lex smiles.

“He and I want to meet the fiancé,” Tim says.

Lex laughs, “You’ve met David before. And you’ve seen him on video chat dozens of times.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tim brushes that off, “He was just the boyfriend last time we met in person. This is the first time I’ll be seeing him as your fiancé. And Sean hasn’t had the chance to really meet him yet, as you know. We want to have a talk with him.”

“You both better be nice to him, Tim,” Lex says just as David enters the apartment. Ellie hops out of Lex’s lap, meowing, and goes to greet him. That cat has a clear favorite and David gloats about it as often as possible.

Lex smiles in greeting while Tim rambles in her ear. David returns the smile, makes a phone hand gesture and arches an eyebrow at her.

She mouths ‘Tim’ at him and he nods, waves, and motions toward the kitchen before going off to make them some dinner.

Lex takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. Her brother is still droning on in her ear, telling her all about some kind of glaze mix up in his ceramics studio class earlier that day, and David is clinking together pots and pans as he navigates around their kitchen, Ellie on his heels, meowing away. She closes her eyes and just takes it all in, every sound washing over her, like a warm, comforting caress.

* * *

 

New York never stops. It comes close sometimes, but it never completely stills.

_The city that never sleeps_. Full of people who rarely rest even.

Lex has never called another place home.

She’s one of those people who were born to rarely rest. One of the few people who isn’t resting now, despite the early snowstorm blowing through in late November, filling her Saturday morning walk with a swirling chill of white.

She has an appointment to keep, even in the snow. One that she isn’t willing to reschedule.

The meeting place isn’t far from her apartment. A café just a few blocks away, not a significant trek. The walk that morning looks different in the billow of icy flakes enveloping her though. The scenery makes it feel like a monumental quest, or a great adventure. Just the thought makes her palms sweat against the interior of her expensive cashmere gloves.

She has had more than enough adventures for a lifetime.

She steps into the café entryway quickly and takes a moment to catch her breath in the sudden warmth.

“Lex?”

A familiar voice causes her head to snap to the right.

Dr. Ian Malcolm is one of three other people in the little shop and he’s smiling at her, seated with a hot drink already in front of him, but ready to stand and greet her.

She can’t help smiling at him in return, feeling the knot in her chest melt away like the snow dripping off of her coat.

“Ian,” she greets in return.

Long ago they dispensed of any formalities between them.

Ian smiles wider and stands then. He helps her remove her coat, hangs it on the nearby coat stand, and pulls her into a hug that makes her forget she was ever out in the cold.

“Sorry I’m a little late,” she says.

“Hey, it’s understandable,” he reassures her, “what with the weather and everything.”

It’s all a part of their ritual. Once a month they meet for coffee. Once a month Lex is always late, Ian always early. Once a month he always finds some excuse for her tardiness and forgives it like there’s nothing to forgive.

He pulls out her chair for her and helps her sit before reclaiming his own seat.

Their usual waiter, Mark, brings Lex her usual order without having to be asked: a soy latte and a scone. This month’s flavor is pumpkin spice. She smiles her thanks and turns her attentions back to Ian.

“So how is everything going in the world of Lex?” He asks, and they both settle in for a long chat.

They’ve been doing this for years now. Keeping tabs on one another, like friends, or, truth be told, more like family. Ian, the one remnant of the Island, other than Tim, that Lex has vowed never to let slip from her fingers. Not that there was ever a worry of that happening.

It seemed, from the very first day back, that Ian had, in a way, adopted her and Tim. He visited them within the first week of their return, and every few months after that. He made sure he was at all of their major life events – concerts, award ceremonies, graduations. He took them for birthday dinners and trips to the park. He became the father figure their own father forgot to be following their parents’ divorce. The uncle that their own uncle never even attempted to be.

“Everything is good,” Lex tells him, taking her mug of coffee in hand and letting the warmth soak into her chilled fingers. “I’m busy planning the Holiday benefit at work…”

Ian hums before asking, “It’s wildlife, uh, protection – protection this year, right?”

Lex blinks away the flash of a memory of dark scales and high pitched whining that the term “wildlife” still manages to bring to the front of her mind.

“Yeah,” she answers, smile feeling thin, “Tigers, specifically, this time.”

“Sarah and I will be there,” he says.

Lex grins more easily at him. Sarah is, truth be told, one of Lex’s all-time favorite people.

Lex is forever amazed that Sarah deigned to stay with Ian, even after everything Lex’s grandfather and InGen put her through on the second island. And she’s amazed Ian managed to stay with her for all of these years when he never could keep any of his marriages together before her, not for a quarter of this time anyway.

The two of them made a good match, though, and if Isla Sorna couldn’t tear them apart, then not even Ian could break what they had.

The fact that they never brought formal, legal marriage into the equation probably helped things.

“Will Kelly be there too?” Lex asks. “Last I heard from her, she was off in Venice researching her thesis?”

Lex has met all three of Ian’s kids. Kelly is the closest to her in age, though, and another survivor, so an easy camaraderie blossomed early between them. While Lex doesn’t go out for coffee with her monthly, like she does with Ian, she and Kelly do keep in touch regularly.

Ian smiled, “She’ll be home for New Year’s, but not for Christmas. She’s off to Paris at the moment.”

They’re good. These ‘dates’ they have. They provide a strange sort of comfort to Lex, which is rare in her life these days. She suspects Ian feels the same way, or close to it. He never lets himself miss or reschedule their meetings either, not if he can help it. He goes out of his way to make sure they get this bit of routine. Lex takes Ian for granted sometimes, but she never loses sight of what these meetings are – gestures of love – and she tries her best to make sure he knows the sentiment is mutual.

“How’s Tim?” Ian asks next.

Lex notes the turn in Ian’s expression when he asks about Tim. He always becomes just a little closed off, more careful with how much emotion he shares.

Tim is in regular contact with Lex. They speak once a day, either on the phone or by text or email or sometimes by video chat. Tim’s not so good at keeping up with anyone other than Lex though.

She feels badly about it, because Ian has always done nothing but love them and look out for them. But Tim, while looking out for himself, cut ties with everyone in his life on the East coast, not just the ties to his family. While Lex knows Tim loves Ian in his own way, she also knows he hasn’t spoken to him since he graduated high school, not outside of small talk at the yearly benefit.

Tim is a sensitive subject, then. One Lex prefers to steer clear of with other people, but Ian deserves answers, if not from Tim directly, then from Lex.

“He’s doing really well,” she tells him, noting the way Ian’s shoulders simultaneously relax and tense as she broaches the subject. “His gallery and shop are doing well. He has plenty of art students coming through the studio. He and Sean have been together almost nine years now, if you can believe it. They’re in a good place.”

Ian nods before gratefully switching topics. “And you? How are you and David doing?”

Lex’s smile is less forced.

“We’re great,” she tells him. “David is wonderful. We both work too hard, but the Foundation can’t run itself, and we’re lucky to have the chance to do what we love. So it all evens out.”

“Good,” he says, his smile easy and his eyes warm, “That’s really good.”

* * *

 

Lex grew up ‘surprisingly well-adjusted, all things considered.’ At least that’s what her therapist tells her.

She was thirteen during the Incident and seventeen when her grandfather passed away. At eighteen she started to be groomed to take over as CEO for the Hammond Foundation. She went to college a few blocks away from her mom’s apartment, lived at home, studied business, minored in law and environmental studies, and Tim spent the entire time she was in undergrad looking at her with more than a little pity in his eyes.

“Why do you let them tell you what you should be?” he asked her once.

He couldn’t have been more than fifteen at the time, but even then, long gone were the sweet, innocent eyes her brother once had. He grew hard, angry, _suspicious_ , after the Island. He gave up every trace of the childhood whimsy he once had in favor of a closed off disdain for everyone except Lex.

“It’s what I want to be too,” she had told him. Going for reassuring, but sounding hollow even to her own ears.

Tim just shook his head, unable or unwilling to believe her.

There wasn’t a trace of a dinosaur left in their house once they returned. Tim replaced every poster, every figurine, every science book with canvas and paint and spinning wheels and hunks of clay.

He was good, too. Really good. He had a grasp of light and movement reminiscent of Saskia Ozols Eubanks, but with a more pop art color palette.

And if Lex occasionally spotted movement in his strokes like the arch of a sleek lizard tail, she just blinked it away.

They both had their issues to work through. They probably always would. Not that that was or is something their mom would ever understand or accept.

When Tim left, their mom chalked it up to him moving on and forward and being a great success. Lex was able to see it for what it really was, though: an attempted escape, a fleeing from the demons that cling to him still.

Lex has her own clinging demons to deal with, even being as ‘well-adjusted’ as she supposedly is.

But Lex is good at her job. She is an heir to a charitable empire and she is really just excellent at handling it all. The Board loves her, even with their initial concerns. Her colleagues and employees find her fair and friendly, and she earns everyone’s respect. She even met David there, when he joined the team as CFO three years ago. Despite all of Tim’s disdain and disapproval, she is professionally thriving.

Tim told her once, drunk and melancholy at the previous year’s Winter Benefit, that he was proud she managed to find David. He called him her ‘escape without escaping.’

Tim never mentioned it again after that, and she knew he wouldn’t, not while sober, but she has never stopped thinking about it. Every time she looks at David. Every time she looks in the mirror.

_I run without leaving_ , she thought. _Well,_ _it’s better than the alternative, I suppose._

Because Tim ran and left and no matter how far he settled himself he never seemed to really escape anything.

He is happier away though, far happier than he ever was staying, and that is no small achievement. Lex is thankful he’s managed to find that.

* * *

 

Every year two weeks before the Winter Benefit, the management team of the Hammond Foundation visits the venue for the event and samples the menu. It’s an excuse for an outing with her colleagues, it gives the lower level employees a chance to have their own holiday party and gift exchange back at the office without worrying about the supervisors and their approval, and it gives everyone a much needed break before the big event takes place.

There’s only ever one rule around the office and at the fundraisers they throw – absolutely no lime of any kind can be present in any dish or drink.

It’s a non-negotiable rule, one that Lex framed in such a way that made everyone just assume she has a severe allergy to limes. Only David, Tim, and Ian know the truth.

She’s late to this year’s tasting, though, because she has a meeting with a major donor, and she has everyone start without her. She doesn’t make it to the hotel restaurant until they’ve moved on to desserts.

It’s not until she’s seated that she smells it.

Karl, the head chef, sets down a platter of slices of fresh Key Lime pie.

And Lex goes stock still before beginning to shake.

She’s not sure what exactly happens next. David catches on to the signs faster than she ever expected he could. He has the pie cleared away and their colleagues filing out of the private room they’ve been occupying all before the first gasp for air leaves her lungs.

“Breathe with me, baby,” he’s saying to her, crouched beside her, already looking though her phone contacts for Dr. Connor’s emergency cell number.

She keeps gasping for air, her lungs feel tight, everything feels tight, and all she can see is that shadow of a raptor, the lime jello on her spoon trembling, the lime taste in her mouth turning ashen and sour. Then there’s a screech, like nails on a chalkboard, filling her ears and her head, and she can see the golden eyes narrow to slits, the sharp teeth glinting through a sneer.

And then Dr. Connor’s voice is filling the room, breaking through the terror, and David is hovering but not touching, keeping her safe, but not intruding. And Lex is still shaking, but she can almost breathe again.

“You’re in New York,” David says, a repetitive mantra. “You’re here with me. The Island is _far_ away. The pie is gone. You’re safe here.”

And she’s crying then, reaching for him, clinging to his back as she buries her face in his stomach.

He takes her to see Dr. Connor once she’s back in the present. She clings to him the entire taxi ride there and the entire taxi ride home.

She doesn’t tell Tim about it when he calls that night.

* * *

 

“Have you heard from any of the others?” Lex asks Ian as they walk around Union Square, bundled tightly in their coats and scarves, fighting off the winter cold, but still eating ice cream.

They don’t usually meet outside of their monthly coffee dates, not unless there’s a special occasion to mark, but Lex is still finding solid ground after her panic attack and he is always a ready source of comfort.

“No,” he answers truthfully, not bothering to pretend he doesn’t know who she’s talking about.

‘The others’ are not a usual topic of discussion between them. In fact, they’re never a topic of discussion between them.

“Ellie wrote me emails for a while,” Lex tells him, swirling her spoon in the cup of peppermint ice cream she’s holding in her gloved hands, “But the replies became few and far between. It’s been almost two years now.”

Ian hums in response before asking carefully, “And Alan?”

Lex is thankful to the cold for already pinking her cheeks as she feels the warmth rise in her face at Alan’s name. She shakes her head.

“Not since we got back.”

She lets the weight of those words sink heavy between them.

Alan Grant effectively saved everything. They all played their parts in ensuring their survival, even Lex and Tim, just little kids at the time, but Alan was Lex and Tim’s protector. He was their champion. He kept them alive through the whole godforsaken ordeal.

And then he disappeared from their lives completely.

It’s been twenty years and the sting of it feels as fresh as if it happened twenty minutes ago.

“Alan…” Ian starts to say and trails off, pressing his lips into a tight line while he considers his words carefully. “Alan is a top-notch scientist. And he’s a good man. But a man who spends all of his time digging thing up out of the dirt doesn’t plant any roots in it. He’s always going to run from the tough things. No matter how honorable he is.”

Time and age have turned Ian into a bit of a poet and Lex can’t help smiling at his words. The smile’s tinged with sadness, a sadness she’s felt deep in her soul for two decades now, but it’s still a smile. And he returns it easily before taking another bite of his rocky road.

* * *

 

“Did you invite everyone again this year?” Tim asks three days before the party.

She can hear Sean moving in the background, no doubt packing for their flight in two days. Tim has never been good at packing. He’s not even pretending to help. Lex knows that Sean honestly prefers when he stays out of his way, though.

Lex is staring at a recipe for vegetarian lasagna, trying to decide how early she needs to start preparing it in order to have it cooked in time for dinner. David is at the store getting all of the ingredients.

“Everyone?” she asks, absentmindedly.

Normally, they don’t ever refer to the Island or the other survivors, aside from themselves and Ian. And Tim rarely mentions Ian. They certainly never mention the Incident, or say anything specific about it. Their conversations are made up of thinly veiled references. It used to confuse the hell out of Sean and David when they first got involved in their lives. Now they too can converse in the language of allusions.

“Yeah,” Tim says, voice tight, “The Scientists.”

It doesn’t matter that Ian isn’t a scientist, Lex knows Tim is asking about all three of the adults from the Island.

“Oh,” she blinks, gathering her thoughts together. “Ummm, yeah. Yeah I did.”

Silence falls over the phone line then. It feels stifling.

“Ian is looking forward to seeing you,” she tells Tim, hoping to break through the sudden awkwardness.

She can hear Tim sigh.

Ian is a relatively safe subject. Ian never abandoned them.

“How is he?” Tim asks.

“He’s good,” she says.

She doesn’t say that Ian misses him. She doesn’t say that Ian wishes he would call every once in a while.

There’s no point in saying it. She knows Tim will just brush it off.

_He’s been gone all this time and yet he’s still somehow running from them, from us._

And then Tim surprises her and says, “It’ll be nice to see him.”

She wants to let that sink in a moment, but Tim rushes to fill the silence before she can reply.

“The other two aren’t coming though?” he asks.

She sighs.

She sends invitations to Ellie and Alan every year. She has since before she took over running the Foundation. They never reply and they never show up. She checked the Foundation’s donation records the first year she took over and she saw that they both, however, did make small but generous donations. And they continued to make them every year after that.

“No,” she tells him, tone reassuring. “They never do.”

They both let the next silence draw out between them.

As much hurt and anger as Lex feels toward Ellie and Alan for the way they just disappeared from their lives, she knows Tim feels it worse. Not so much over Ellie, but Alan. Alan broke Tim’s young heart, and to some degree it was intentional, even if Alan had no clue just how deeply Tim’s feelings ran. That wounds never did heal up completely, not even after twenty years.

They’re both still sitting in silence, listening to one another breathe through the phone, when David returns home.

Lex makes her excuses, says she has to go make dinner, and gets off the phone. Tim promises to see her in two days before they hang up. The quiet remains hanging over Lex afterward though. David just settles into it with her and it feels instantly more companionable. She smiles her thanks at him and he returns the smile, brushing his fingers against hers as he passes her the spinach to clean before going to chop the zucchini.

* * *

 

After ten years of doing this, Lex has the actual party planned so thoroughly that it goes off without a hitch. Like a fine-tuned, well-oiled machine. She has contingency plans in place, just on the off chance that something goes wrong, and there are teams from the DiCaprio and World Wildlife Foundations supporting her team, but everything, thankfully, goes according to the original plan.

She greets all of the guests as they circulate through the cocktail hour. Her parents are here, milling around, each with their own dates, and she sees them first so she can beg off to go greet others instead of getting stuck with listening to one or both of them complain about one another all evening.

Ian finds her about an hour into the event.

“Everything seems to be going well,” he tells her, giving her a warm hug followed by a soft kiss to the cheek.

“You look beautiful,” he says then, gesturing to the midnight blue gown she’s wearing and the messy up-do she threw her long hair into.

“Thank you,” she says, smiling easier now that he’s there.

“Where’s David?” he asks.

Lex gestures to the sea of people, helplessly, before saying, “He’s somewhere out there, being a shining example of the Hammond Foundation for all, and probably flirting with little old ladies to raise even more funds.”

Ian laughs.

“Where is Sarah?” Lex asks.

He smiles wider then, waves off to the crowd in a similar manner to her previous gesture and he says, “She’s with her people here.”

Lex laughs with him then.

“An animal behaviorist in a sea of Tiger lovers,” Tim’s voice breaks through their laughter, startling them both. “You may never see her again after tonight.”

They turn to him together and he smiles sheepishly, Sean beside him.

“Timmy,” Lex breathes his name out on a sigh. She sounds young then, even to her own ears. She feels young again too as she pulls him into a hug and hangs onto him tightly.

“Hey, Lex,” he says into her hair, squeezing her back.

“You’re like a breath of fresh air,” she says in response, overcome with the need to have her brother near, not even bothering to censor her words to him right now.

He squeezes her a fraction tighter and she blinks back tears.

When they release one another she can see he is doing the same.

“Tim,” she says his name again, fondly, and smiles at him so wide that her face hurts.

He lets out a laugh and smiles at her in return. There’s a quality to it, an unchecked adoration and excitement layered within it, that she hasn’t seen in him since before the Island. They transform him immediately into that sweet kid she lost that weekend twenty years ago. She’s not sure what brought on the change, exactly, but it feels fleeting and she wants to hug him to her again and never let him go.

She doesn’t though. She huffs out a stuttered exhale and let’s Tim turn to greet Ian while Sean steps up to hug her next.

“It’s so good to see you again, Lex,” Sean says, holding her almost as tightly as Tim did.

She returns the embrace, thankful to have him there, thankful to know Tim’s not ever really alone even when he’s running, and she kisses his cheek before he can pull away. It startles a smile from him, one warm and far more familial than any smile her mother or father has given her since she was small.

“I’m really glad you could be here,” she tells him.

“We wouldn’t miss it,” he assures her. And she knows, she knows he’s really saying _I’ll always make sure he doesn’t stay away from you for too long_.

She has to blink against the new prick of tears threatening to well up.

“You’ve outdone yourself this year,” he tells her, easily stepping beside her and leaning close so their arms touch.

“Thank you,” she says, “I had a lot of help.”

“I’m sure,” Sean says, brushing off her modest reply, “But you’re the leader and it’s obvious. You’ve got a real talent for this.”

Sean’s art is soap making and the chemistry of herbal and natural beauty and fragrance blends. He’s brilliant at it. For the past eight years, Lex hasn’t used any moisturizer other than the one he mixes for her special every Christmas.

If anyone knows anything about aesthetic talents, he does.

She can feel herself blush at the compliment.

“Thanks,” she says, not sure what else she can say. He just smiles at her again and wraps his fingers around hers between them.

He nods his head toward Ian and Tim. They’ve moved out of hearing range, in favor of grabbing a few of the circulating hors d'oeuvre while they continue speaking. Ian is smiling at whatever story Tim is telling, his eyes glinting. He looks like Christmas has come early.

Tim, much to Lex’s astonishment, looks much the same.

“He always worries about coming,” Sean says then, low in Lex’s ear even though Tim would never be able to hear them over the soft jazz and the drone of everyone chatting around the room.

“So do I,” she admits, quiet like Sean. “I worry about him coming, I mean.”

“David and I both worry about the two of you, honestly,” Sean admits.

Lex looks at him and gives him a reassuring smile when she catches the sheepish look he shoots her.

“We’re lucky to have you and David,” she tells him, squeezing his hand in hers.

They both turn back to Tim and Ian in time to see Tim actually toss back his head and laugh. Ian is beaming with startled delight, ready to reply, when one of the photographers for the evening snaps a candid of the two of them. Caught at the perfect moment.

“I want a copy of that,” Sean says to her then.

“Consider it done,” she says, voice wavering with her own swirling emotions.

David appears then, shaking Tim and Ian’s hands, and Tim calls Sean and Lex over to them just as the team leader for the DiCaprio Foundation comes to ask Lex a question.

It takes her a few minutes, but she handles the issue easily, and when she turns back to the group, she takes a moment to just watch them. This group of important men in her life, smiling and laughing. Sean has his arm around Tim, Ian is gesturing wildly about something, and David is glancing between everyone and grinning before turning to look for her.

When their eyes meet he tilts his head. A wordless question, as he watches her watching them. She just smiles at him in answer and steps forward to join them, smiling as the sounds of their voices wash over her when she nears.

She situates herself between her fiancé and brother, leaning into David but still brushing close to Tim. Tim smiles at her and takes her hand like Sean did before, tethering the two of them together.

_No one is running away tonight_. The certainty in that realization instantly releases all of Lex’s reserved tension.

With a contented sigh, she holds fast to Tim’s hand and settles into the comforting stillness.


End file.
